Display containers made out of plastic, and in many instances, commonly known as blister packs, are well known in the art. They are used for the display of food, hardware and sundry items. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,499,353; 4,576,330; 4,494,650; 4,150,777; 4,127,189; 4,060,173; and 3,837,526. All of the aforementioned patents deal with plastic, blister pack containers with a variety of means for forming said containers and providing for locking devises for said containers. They serve a variety of purposes from displaying food and maintaining the freshest of food until sold to providing for the display and enclosure of small hardware parts such as nuts, bolts and screws.
Applicant's invention is directed towards the amusement game industry and in particular, to amusement games which commonly use a crane mechanism enclosed within a chamber, the chamber being filled with a variety and assortment of prizes. The player would insert the required amount of money to activate the game and then through his dexterity and eye-hand coordination, would attempt to manuever the crane to a position over the prize which he desired. The player would then attempt to manipulate the crane in order to pick up the prize and manuever it to an aperture for award to the player. In the past, such games have contained a variety of economical amusements prizes and are found at fairs, carnivals and boardwalk arcades.
As the popularity for these games increased, the desire for better prizes has become a concern of the owners of the games. Further, the players of such games desire the opportunity to attempt to obtain better prizes. A popular form of prize which has developed is that of costume jewelry which is normally packaged in small plastic containers which are difficult to extract from the game with the crane mechanism and because of their size, such as earrings in a small plastic container, they are not often readily viewable by the player when the chamber is filled. In order to make them more readily viewable, the owner of the game cannot fill the game with sufficient prizes so that the game can operate for a sufficient period of time without restocking. In such a case, if the operator wished to have exclusively jewelry within the game, he could only load the game with approximately one to two levels of prizes and would have to return to the game on a frequent basis for restocking. The operator's desire is to fill the game to its maximum capacity yet still provide the potential player with the opportunity to view the prize and to attempt to extract the prize with the operator returning to restock the game on a more infrequent basis.
Applicant's display container provides for an economical and novel container which can contain securely within it, the plastic container normally associated with costume jewelry. The container permits the operator to stack the game to a sufficient level such that it can be used by potential players for a substantially longer period of time without restocking yet provides the potential player with the opportunity to view and choose the prize which he desires to pursue within the game and provides for a container which is graspable by the crane, thus giving the potential player a better opportunity to obtain the prize.